Fun for Some: Difference between revisions

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** There's an episode of ''[[Black Books]]'' where Fran is turned on by an ex-boyfriend's dramatic voice. She discovers he reads the Shipping Forecast and ends up... listening to it in bed...

* [[The London Underground]] map, originally just an experiment in applying electrical diagramming techniques to the Tube. Yet today, it's one of the best known symbols of London, and comes on posters, T-shirts and ash trays.

** Also spawned a first-parody, now-real strategy game ''[[wikipedia:Mornington Crescent (game)|Mornington Crescent]]''.

* A lot of old filmstrips (usually from [[The Fifties]]) were meant to be educational, but are now considered hilarious. ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2kdpAGDu8s Duck and Cover]'' is the most famous of these. ''[[Gaia Online]]'', a forum site that makes no pretense of being educational, has a special part in its cinema gallery for filmstrips like ''Duck and Cover'', so people can laugh at them.

** Likewise, many ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' episodes include particularly ridiculous examples of these in the show.

** Numbers stations are to the shipping forecast as [[Nightmare Fuel|collecting serial killer memorabilia is to collecting stamps.]] More overtly entertaining ''in that it's absolutely terrifying.''

* Before it started [[Network Decay|running documentaries and reality shows]], The Weather Channel in the United States continuously broadcast local weather conditions and forecasts, and many people tuned in for long periods of time. It has long had a "Local on the 8s" feature, where TWC's server at the local cable network would insert local conditions and the forecast at eight, 18, 28, etc. minutes past the hour.

** Also done in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' when Jonas Quinn, who's from a slightly less advanced civilization on another world, finds the Weather Channel fascinating and can watch it for hours.

** The Weather Channel and similar things being used like this is pretty commonly used as a form of "white noise" for insomniacs needing something to lull them to sleep/block out other noises so they can sleep (e.g. predictable, low-level, boring noise as opposed to, say, the news or a barking infomercial or a loud movie or concert) and by people who need distracting noise blocked out so they can concentrate but don't need the noise itself becoming a distraction (writers, artists, etc)

** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd9CxIlkjpk 11 minutes of paint drying.] Just paint drying. As of this entry, it has almost a hundred thousand likes.

* Many people, especially in the United Kingdom, have an interest in the non-program parts of television: test cards, fault announcements, etc. See [http://www.transdiffusion.org/ Transdiffusion] and its affiliate sites.

 

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[[Category:Audience Reactions]]

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